Eduardo González
The General Affairs Council (GAC) of the EU yesterday ignored the official memorandum presented by Spain to request that Catalan, Basque and Galician be official languages of the Union.
The State Secretary for the European Union, Fernando Sampedro Marcos, presented the proposal, one day after the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured in Brussels that, since last Friday, an official memorandum had been distributed with the “solid and legitimate” arguments from Spain in favor of the official status of the three languages.
Spain’s arguments, Albares assured, “are now all in a single document, black on white” and, “therefore, no one will be able to say that they need more time for reflection or that they have not known them.”
Although the GAC included in its agenda an “exchange of views” on Spain’s proposal to modify the regulation “by which the linguistic regime of the European Economic Community is established”, the six-page report sent to the 27 and presented orally yesterday by Sampedro before his European counterparts, it was neither debated nor voted on. In fact, the matter appeared on the agenda as a mere “information point.”
Several States, such as Estonia or Finland, have rejected the proposal because it could be a precedent for other countries. Despite this lack of unanimity (essential for the Spanish initiative to move forward), Sampedro assured that “Spain is not going to abandon this demand” and will provide all the information necessary to convince the partners.
European and diplomatic sources from different States reported by Europa Press assured that the proposal reached the CAG after several months off the agenda and without it having been addressed at the level of ambassadors or any preparatory work having taken place in the technical groups of the Council.
